I’ve just gotten info that HP has put up specifications pages for their recently announced Elitebook models! [Thanks Allan and kj for the heads up]. No pricing or (pre-)order pages just yet, but you can still drool over the specifications and start saving up now! HP is currently offering five Intel Core i5/i7 processor options at the moment (four options for the p-professional variants), and notably some options mentioned by closet owners are missing. On the positive side, the current choices are still pretty darn powerful and surprise, surprise, HP is using Nvidia’s latest 2010 Quadro FX cards on the 8440w and 8540w, as well as making Quadro NVS graphics available as options on the 8440p and 8540p.

What are you waiting for, here are direct links to their individual specifications pages:

Well, I wasn’t really expecting HP to put in ATI’s cards anyway, because there has been word long before this week’s announcements that the new Elitebook models were going to be “Nvidia exclusive”. The graphics cards in notebooks are not upgradeable and I’m not sure how you can get an ATI Mobile card (even if you did, the question then would be whether it would fit/work).

An interesting thing I find noteworthy is that HP offers ATI graphics options (though FireGL workstation cards, but nevertheless ATI) for the old Elitebook 8530w/8730w, so there is a chance that will happen again this round. Also, the old Elitebook 6930p was ATI-exclusive (no Nvidia option) and it’s roughly the same form factor as its successor, the 8440w/8440p.

HP did note during the announcements of the Elitebooks that they would support Core i5/i7 and “future Intel Core processors”. So the possibility of options for new/other brand graphics cards is not that far away.

It seems the 8740w will be the last model to be released. May be HP is studying the chance of including a backlit keyboard since Night Light does not cover all the keyboard area on this machine (at least on the old 8730w)? … I wish so. I can wait more time, but I hope the release of the 8740w won’t be until march!

Well, technically you softmod the Quadro’s into thinking themselves as GeForce cards by installing GeForce drivers. The new Quadro FX380M, FX880M and FX1800M are all very similar to the GeForce 300-series cards that Nvidia launched recently.

Even with their default Quadro drivers, without the driver trick above, the Quadro cards still perform pretty well in gaming (of course, they are also more expensive…)

I’m a bit torn… I like the form factor of the 8440 but I also like the 16GB of RAM on the 8540 (plus I don’t really want a numeric keypad… I detest them). I’m also unsure of which to choose wrt the ‘p’ or ‘w’ series as I don’t really run anything particularly graphically challenging except a few old games and the (marketing) rated 24hr battery life of the ‘p’ is very appealing.

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